LaCinetek is a platform that offers film classics curated by some of today’s prominent filmmakers, along with a range of additional content such as interviews, additional scenes, alternative endings, and other archival materials through which viewers can discover the relationship between filmmakers and their favorite films.

This year Memory! presents three of Pascale Ferran’s top picks: Cat People, Beauty and the Beast, and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The first two titles offer an immediate thematic connection to Ferran’s own contribution to the festival, Bird People. In those films true love is made nearly impossible by the hybrid condition, which is the principle barrier to overcome. While Beauty and the Beast is an operatic fairy-tale, the tradition of magical realism pervades the worlds of Cat People and Bird People (likeness of titles not accidental), where the supernatural realm seamlessly blends with the ordinary, familiar world. These alternative universes offer an implicit criticism of society though the peculiar viewpoint of the hybrid. Such a decentered strangeness is visible also in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a colorful musical fantasy which is yet a very palpable story of heartache, disappointment, and the ultimate acceptance of the ordinary.

LaCinetek curators include directors Olivier Assayas, Jacques Audiard, James Gray, Cristian Mungiu, Céline Sciamma, Agnès Varda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and many others whose personal influences from the repertoire of twentieth century classics have shaped their own creative practice. In addition to a new monthly selection, LaCinetek video-on-demand includes a social environment where viewers can further refine their own personalized collections. At the present time, LaCinetek platform is available only in France.